


make my own way

by detective_terrible_detective



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Guilt, Happy Ending, Healthy Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Painting, Paris (City), Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22059199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detective_terrible_detective/pseuds/detective_terrible_detective
Summary: They never have children. Neither of them are the type of people that do (or should). They are content with their simple existence, full of paint and laughter and music and love, all the gaps and cracks filled with each other.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March
Comments: 13
Kudos: 234





	make my own way

They don’tstay in Massachusetts. Laurie isn’t built for small town life and Amy has spent her whole life trying to get away. She doesn’t want to be the kind of woman that Marmee is, or that Meg is becoming, with tired eyes and grey hair before their time. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with ‘that kind of woman’, it just isn’t the life Amy has imagined for herself; not when she was seven, not when she was ten or fifteen or eighteen, and not now.

So they go back to France. Laurie finds them an apartment, in what had apparently once been the home of a duke of old France. The old woman who shows them around doesn’t elaborate on what had happened to the duke, but Amy knows to read between the lines.

Laurie still goes to parties every other evening, but he doesn’t drink so much anymore. Not the way he had before, drinking so much that he was lost to the world and the world was lost to him. He still dances with other women. It had bothered her once, when he danced with other women (especially when he danced with Jo. How she had hated Jo back then, when it seemed that all Laurie had eyes for was her).

Now they are married, her jealousy has faded away, leaving behind a certain smugness that no matter who he danced with, she would always be the one he came home with at the end of the night. And she is no sad abandoned wife, drooping on the fringes of the party. She dances with many men. Handsome men, old men, rich men, any men. It doesn’t make much difference, because none of them are Laurie.

~

Amy is twenty-five when she begins painting again. The words she had spoken in the studio all those years ago, fuelled by all the anger and sadness of a girl who was about to sign her life away in pursuit of the wrong goal. She has given up her dreams of greatness, but finds she cannot give up her painting.

She has claimed it for so long; the thing that set her apart from the others. There had been other things that had set her apart. But painting was the thing she chose, the same way Jo had chosen her writing.

When she was a girl, she longed to paint Laurie. She had drawn him many times, quick, hurried sketches, done before anyone might see and make fun (done before Jo might see). But she had wanted him to want her to draw him. To lay himself down before her, and be hers. And now she has, many times over.

The first time, Laurie had begged her to paint him. Amy had laughed at him, called him vain. And he was vain, but that was part of his charm. And she wanted to paint him, desperately. The rest had flowed easily after that. Laurie was an eager model, willing to pose however she told him (sometimes he offered suggestions of his own. She didn’t often take them).

~

People buy her paintings. The thirteen year old who sometimes visits the back of her mind is viciously proud.

~

Amy doesn’t think about Beth anymore.

As a child, she didn’t think much about Beth either. In her mind, Beth was boring. All she did was play with her dolls and muck around with the piano that never sounded quite right, no matter what Beth did. She had never wanted to go out, to talk to people, to be admired.

She doesn’t think about Beth now because it hurts her. It hurts to know that her quiet little sister, who never said a bad word about anything, hadn’t wanted her own sister there as she died. Had forbidden the family from sending Amy letters. Had never sent any of her own letters, either. Marmee had told her that Beth hadn’t wanted to ruin Amy’s stay on the Continent.

But it still hurt, because Amy hadn’t known Beth was sick. Hadn’t heard anything about any of it, not until she died. And then the letters had come flooding in, and she had found out about everything, in a whirlwind of sadness and hurt and hate.

Hate.

She had hated them for not telling her. She had hated them all. And some small part of her still hated them, and she didn’t think it would ever stop.

~

They never have children. Neither of them are the type of people that do (or should). They are content with their simply existent, full of paint and laughter and music and love, all the gaps and cracks filled with each other.

Meg sends letter sometimes, talking about everything but the subject of children. But somehow, they are still full of children, every paragraph and stroke of the pen. Amy doesn’t often return Meg’s letters.

She and Jo write to one another. Sometimes. Neither of them are regular correspondents, and sometimes months will pass before Amy receives another letter. She doesn’t mind, because she is the same, unable to force the words out at times.

~

Amy March is fifty-three. She has not set foot on American soil in almost twenty-five years. If the world was run according to her specifications, she would never again return to the country of her birth. But, as unwilling as she was to admit it growing up, the world does not revolve around her every whim.

She goes back to Massachusetts, accompanied by Laurie, for the funeral of John Brooke. It is a quiet trip, full of long train rides with no conversation. Laurie clings to her hand like it’s a lifeline. She thinks perhaps it is.

The funeral is a suitably solemn affair, and while she and John Brooke were never close, she is sad all the same, because Meg stands there clutching the twins’ hands like Laurie had clutches hers, looking so old and sad and tired and so very like Marmee that it makes Amy so angry that she wants to scream and cry and throw things.

For the first time in her life, she understands Jo. Understands the rage that bubbles beneath her skin and spills from her fists and feet and mouth. She looks at Laurie, who is drawn and grey, shaking, but not from cold. And she is furious at whoever took this kind man away from his family and away from Laurie.

~

They go back to Europe. Amy paints. Laurie plays (both at music and at life). They are happy together.

Amy March never returns to America again.

**Author's Note:**

> because i fucking love this ship and amy deserves to have her dreams come true


End file.
